The Home Office failed to act on grave warnings from the British Red Cross about an unfolding crisis at two immigration centres, despite employing them to support migrants at the sites and report back, newly released documents reveal.
The documents – that the Home Office took more than two years to release – raise questions about officials’ handling of Western Jet Foil migrant processing centre in Dover and Manston centre in Kent in the autumn of 2022.
Emails, performance reports and letters sent by the Red Cross to senior Home Office officials between September and November 2022 – disclosed to The Independent under freedom of information laws – show how the charity raised “deeply troubling observations” at the two sites and tried to get the Home Office to act.
Among the issues raised were the confiscation of crucial medication, concerns about migrants’ access to urgent medical care, and people being housed in leaking tents without adequate sleeping provisions.
Red Cross staff were on site at both centres in the autumn of 2022, when a humanitarian crisis began. Manston became severely overcrowded, with migrants unable to access healthcare and forced to sleep on damp and mouldy wooden flooring.
As conditions spiralled out of control, the Home Office came under increasing pressure from MPs, unions and the media to act. The Kent site, which was designed to hold up to 1,600 people, was housing 4,000 at the end of October 2022. On 19th November, a detainee died.
After weeks of delay, on 22nd November, the government announced that Manston had been emptied.
This period coincided with the tumultuous 49-day Liz Truss premiership. The home secretary at the time, Suella Braverman, was forced to resign on 19 October for using her personal email, resulting in Grant Shapps taking up the position for six days, until Ms Braverman returned on 25 October when Rishi Sunak became prime minister.
Documents show that the security situation became so concerning that the Red Cross decided to withdraw completely from Western Jet Foil, a smaller processing site that can house up to 250 migrants. Just two weeks after this, far-right extremist Andrew Leak firebombed the facility and later killed himself at a nearby petrol station.
Red Cross staff also attempted to contact the Home Office’s whistleblowing email address in late October but received a response saying the service would not accept “correspondence from an external source”.
An inquiry into the crisis at Manston processing centre is underway to establish what went wrong and why, though it is not clear whether this probe will cover Western Jet Foil.
The Red Cross programme, named the Channel Crossing pilot, was launched on 8 August 2022, with teams aiming to be at either Western Jet Foil or Manston sites for a few days each week. They would provide humanitarian support to the migrants on site, escalate problems to the contractors and Home Office, and regularly give feedback to civil servants about what was happening.
Both sites were being used as temporary holding facilities for small boat migrants who had just arrived in the UK. At the time, migrants should only have been held at these sites for no more than 24 hours.
By early September, the Red Cross teams were identifying concerns about Manston and Western Jet Foil and relaying these back to the Home Office, documents show. They pressed for the Home Office to provide better translation services at the sites, and to screen migrants for medical issues and vulnerabilities such as signs of modern slavery.
They told officials that clarity was needed to determine how migrants could get urgent medical care, and explained that some asylum seekers had had crucial medication confiscated.
They reported that staff at the site were making regular jokes about guessing the ages of young migrants, and there was widespread use of glance age assessments, the charity reported.
Later that month, the charity asked that the Home Office provide people with things to do, such as colouring books, magazines or toys to help dispel tensions and boredom at Manston, and they asked for more bed rolls and blankets so that people could sleep.
Conditions were getting worse and in late September the charity continued to press for action, concerned that people were being held far beyond the 24-hour limit at Manston. Numbers had now started to exceed capacity as more migrants arrived and weren’t moved out.
In a brief sent on 30 September, the Red Cross noted that the medical unit at Manston was being overwhelmed, with skin rashes and respiratory issues affecting more and more people.
“Conditions were generally poor with no dedicated accommodation; limited access to medical care; sanitary provisions, fresh air or good quality food. Staff we spoke to were well aware of the poor conditions with many expressing frustration that more wasn’t being done to make immediate improvements,” the report said.
The team had particular worries about block 10, a unit holding 50 or so families in two medium-sized halls. The buildings were mouldy, damp and poorly ventilated, the charity reported, and had no heating. Clean clothes, underwear and sanitary products were running low, people were complaining of respiratory problems and headaches, and were sleeping on the floor without blankets, the brief warned.
By early October, news about what was happening at Manston started filtering out, with the Prison Officers Association raising the alarm on the 6th. Their statement likened the situation “to a pressure cooker coming to the boil with a jammed release valve”.
Emails reveal that the day before this statement was issued, Red Cross staff were pushing for an urgent meeting with Home Office directors to address their concerns and to seek assurances that action was being taken to deal with the situation.
On 10 October, Red Cross teams at Western Jet Foil were reporting significant numbers of new arrivals, with staff tired and shouting at people. Tents had been put up overnight to increase capacity, some were leaking, and not all had sleeping mats.
A report about a visit to Western Jet Foil on 12 October reveals that Red Cross staff were told by the Border Force commander that up to 1,000 people were expected to attempt the Channel crossing that day as the weather was looking good. This was on top of the 325 people already being processed at Western Jet Foil.
Red Cross staff found that around 100 adult men were being held in the main holding area on benches or sitting on the floor, with some exhibiting “a state of agitation”.
At 1pm that day, immigration officers asked the Red Cross to vacate their on-site office so that they could undertake age assessments of the migrants. The report of the day continued: “The only option offered was an internal office within the holding area where 50 male detainees were shouting, acting aggressively towards security staff and jumping up and down on wooden benches. This was totally unsuitable”.
Describing the conditions, the Red Cross brief said: “Many of the detainees were in poor health with obvious lung infections and previously some BRC staff have reported flea/ insect bites. The presence of such numbers of confused, frustrated and in some cases, aggressive male detainees was very intimidating. There was a palpable air of unease among Border Force and Interforce security staff as more detainees arrived for processing and tempers were obviously short.”
At 1.30pm, the team decided to leave due to the “inherent potential dangers of the site” – and suspended their in-person work at the site two days later.
A day after the Western Jet Foil visit, the Red Cross’s director of refugee support sent a formal letter to three senior Home Office officials demanding urgent action at the Kent and Dover sites, in light of the department’s failure to act on the charity’s fortnightly reports.
The letter was sent as a follow-up to a meeting between the Red Cross and senior Home Office officials on the 11th.
The letter listed the team’s “deeply troubling observations” from their time at Manston and Western Jet Foil, warned that the government was at risk of breaching the Human Rights Act, and said they were probably detaining people unlawfully.
It was also accompanied by a letter sent by the Red Cross’s legal department to the Home Office’s legal department.
Despite an acknowledgment from the Clandestine Threats commander Dan O’Mahoney and attempts to arrange a further meeting, the Red Cross would not receive a formal response to their concerns for two weeks – two days after Manston was cleared of asylum seekers and the crisis had abated.
Among other concerns, the letter reported that staff were refusing to let people sleep when there were high arrival numbers, were removing individuals to isolation buses as a form of punishment, and acting rudely or insensitively towards migrants.
A week after the Red Cross sent the ultimatum letter, it emerged publicly that some migrants at Manston had been diagnosed with diphtheria, a contagious infection that affects the skin, nose and throat.
On receiving no substantial response to their 13th October letter, the Red Cross tried to whistleblow about their concerns and contacted the internal Home Office whistleblowing email address on 27th October.
A response from the whistleblowing email address on 9th November said that it would not accept “correspondence from an external source”.
As officials rushed to ease the overcrowding, a group of 11 asylum seekers were left at a central London station without accommodation after being taken out of Manston. The Home Office said at the time that they believed the migrants had accommodation with friends or family available to them.
Now battling accusations that she had ignored legal advice and blocked plans to use hotels to ease the overcrowding at Manston, Ms Braverman arrived at the immigration centre in a Chinook helicopter on 3rd November.
She also visited Western Jet Foil, which was by this point was reeling from a firebomb attack.
Having exhausted all avenues for escalation, on 11th November, chief executive of the Red Cross Mike Adamson wrote to senior Home Office officials, requesting urgent action once more.
The Red Cross finally got a formal response from Mr O’Mahoney on 24 November where he admitted that the “situation at Western Jet Foil and Manston has been really challenging over the last four months”. He explained: “We have been in a situation where the inflow of arrivals has outstripped the capability to move people into onward accommodation. This has presented us with real logistical issues.”
Alex Fraser, British Red Cross UK director for refugee support, said: “In 2022, the British Red Cross was asked by the Home Office to run a local pilot to provide humanitarian support to some of the men, women and children who had made the dangerous journey to cross the Channel in a small boat.
“We were extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation at Western Jet Foil and Manston and we made this clear at the time. No one should experience overcrowded accommodation that puts them at risk of disease and potentially being detained unlawfully. We know from our work supporting people in similar temporary accommodation what a damaging impact it can have on them.
“The serious problems at these two sites are indicative of the wider issues facing the asylum system. We need a more efficient, compassionate asylum system – one that treats people with humanity, dignity and processes their claims fairly.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The home secretary acted on the advice she was given to establish an independent inquiry into events at the Manston Short-Term Holding Facility between June and November 2022, in line with the commitments made by her predecessors, and on the terms agreed through the subsequent legal process.
“That inquiry will now proceed, and we are supporting it fully. It would be inappropriate to comment further whilst it is ongoing.”
